genre & film

moving image arts study guide

Similarity and Difference

Genre refers to groups of texts which share a pattern of similarity and difference.

Many of the earliest films were genre pictures – as studios (as always) tried to repeat success.

In Shakespeare, there are a limited number of genres: Tragedies, Comedies, Histories

Film genres

Thriller, Action, Romantic Comedy, Road Movie, Disaster Movie and various hybrid genres including Period Drama, Crime Drama, Horror Comedy etc.

changes in genres over time reveal changes in our society and our values

iconography

Genre films usually feature key imagery that repeats itself across different films

setting

Some genres have a distinct location or time period

narrative

Some genres include specific story structures (“a hero’s journey”) or narrative devices (song & dance sequence, showdown, chase scene, shopping montage…)

characters

Heroes, sidekicks, antagonists: some character types are associated more with particular genres and become “generic types”

style

Visual techniques can be specific (or at least more common) in some genres - e.g. low key lighting in horror; epic music in superhero movies

themes

Universal themes characterise some genres. What does it mean to be human? Conflict between tradition and modernity. What is truth? What is love?

Audience

The most important aspect of genre: the response and expectations of the target audience

As an audience, we gain mastery over genre texts by “reading” them — we feel good about doing this

The pleasure for the audience often lies in the experience of difference within the similarity (or vice versa!).

Genre is a bargain between media producers and media audiences — we can feel cheated if genres “trick” us

What scares you?

Mark Kermode (BBC Film Critic)

“William Friedkin [director of The Exorcist] once said that there [are] only really three reasons for making movies: to scare people; to make them laugh; or to turn them on. And that means there [are] only three

genres of movie. I actually think that as far as horror movies are concerned, they are the

sump from which all great cinema comes...”

Types of HorrorPsychological Horror

Body Horror

Gothic Horror

All can involve elements of the supernatural (ghosts, demons, spirits)

All can involve encounters with the monstrous Other (who can appear to be normal until their inner-monster is revealed).

Psychological HorrorRelies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, emotional instability

Can also refer to personality disorders

Creates discomfort in the viewer by exposing common vulnerabilities or fears – the shadowy parts of the self or self-as-other

Examples

Psycho

The Birds

The Haunting

Blair Witch

Body HorrorHorror derived from a sense of “wrongness” with the body:

Physical transformations, body degeneration, mutations, or invasion/violation of the body

ExamplesUn Chien Andalou

Alien

The Fly

The Thing

...anything by Cronenberg!

Gothic HorrorRomantic/Sexual imagery is blended with other elements – it can be a blend of psychological and body horror

Our inner fears are projected onto the outside environment: buildings, forests, the weather

Examples

Anything with vampires!

FrankensteinThe MummyAmityville Horror

Freud’s paper “The Uncanny” was published in 1919

In it, he tried to explain the appeal of the horror genre

Freud noticed that whereas most ART was concerned with beauty, horror fiction was concerned with its opposite: the frightening or the fearful

“The class of frightening things that leads us back to what is known and familiar.”

Freud went further with this idea and talked about things that were hidden from the self.

The scariest things are those which fail to fit

a category: the undead, the not-human.